My expectations for modern pixel art RPGs are high, all thanks to the onslaught of quality titles in recent years. Both indie and AAA publishers are putting out games of such quality that every week I would see another GOTY contender in that style on the horizon. One of these was Alterium Shift, promising three unique, choice-driven campaigns, a mixture of the expected aesthetic and 3D-modeled bosses, as well as unforgettable characters and more! The current version, however, really fails to deliver.
I started my first playthrough as Sage: the mage. Each character gets to control one element, but Sage can use them all as they level up, which seemed like the most fun option. My choice was immediately validated when Sage started to sass everyone they met, with dialogue choices allowing me to mold them into either a complete jerk or a reformed irony addict.
The upward trend continued with a selection of nice environments, an okay fishing minigame, and three enjoyable, starter side quests. One of them consisted of replacing a guard for 15 seconds while they went to relieve themselves. The reward for this was more than half of my total accumulated gold up to that point. This is unironically the exact kind of silly, campy stuff I wanted out of a game like this!
By the time Sage got around to returning to their chambers, I noticed that enemies began dealing 0 damage. This was of course worrisome, but I hoped this was just the case of being slightly over-leveled for the starter area due to running around too much. Little did I know, this would not change for the remainder of Alterium Shift, with enemies, at most, removing 1-10 HP per hit. The balancing issues are worse here than perhaps any other RPG I have played.
The money from the guard allowed Sage to also purchase the shop’s best equipment and several potions. Furthermore, items that dropped from monsters could be traded in for even more healing. The few chests found during exploration always contained consumables as well. By the time I finished day one, I had already stockpiled the strongest items available for the entire adventure.
After (barely) waking up the next day and failing the test, Sage had to swallow their pride and go help a few townsfolk, who typically hated their guts due to their snark. Alterium Shift was doing a great job at setting up a character and quickly having them face their weaknesses, and the story was engaging because of it. This unfortunately proved to be the peak of the game’s story, as the amount of character interactions drastically go down.
What followed was the first taste of a dungeon underneath the town; each character has a unique set of challenges for their trials and Sage’s consisted of finding crystals to open locked doors. Not the most exciting thing, but the boss at the end was an impressive golem—the first 3D model in Alterium Shift. Though it also did not deal damage to Sage, it was a visually engaging combat encounter, a persistent theme in all boss battles at the very least.
Following a plot twist, Alterium Shift takes the character into a new location, and their adventure continues through a few more areas and towns. This is where most of my praise ends. The gameplay loop, sadly, does not evolve, nor does the story or character interactions ever do anything interesting. The game gets progressively less captivating and complex.
I did not encounter a single merchant that would sell equipment for the rest of the game, only ones selling consumables. By the time I reached the third shop, I had 5,000 gold lying in reserve and an insane amount of potions. I had no reason to use them because enemies still dealt no damage. The only new piece of equipment I ever got was a single trinket found in a seemingly random chest.
Alterium Shift turns into a slog of simple fetch quests, with progressively less charismatic dialogue and button-mashing through combat. Absolutely mindless gameplay. There were moments, however, where the music carried an entire section. Alterium Shift starts with very cozy tunes with a tinge of an adventurous spirit, but upon reaching the next big area, it picks up the story’s momentum and becomes very groovy and genuinely exciting. It would soon mellow down again, but I greatly enjoyed just how much that change of pace brought to the table.
Though Alterium Shift was already not much fun, the first actual roadblock was the dungeon which all characters have to go through. Built upon a water-level-raising puzzle, using levers scattered around large chambers and valves hidden in side rooms, it is overflowing with bugs and glitches. The water often defies the laws of physics, refusing to move through open passages, all the while mechanisms blocking them sometimes lacked an animation for moving, making it difficult to survey the room and plan out the solution.
Getting through this dungeon three times total was not just tedious, it was the single worst part of every playthrough. The boss at the end once again did not prove to be of any challenge, and the current version ends soon after, with one more short area and a mini-dungeon. My first playthrough left me largely unsatisfied, so I hoped revisiting the early stages as other characters would make the game enjoyable once more.
Alterium Shift’s promise of providing truly unique adventures as each character is, frankly, only half-true. Each of the main three gets a unique area and boss for their trial, which was great, but I found both Pyra’s and Atlas’ playthroughs remarkably similar to each other. They are rather simple characters: one’s a hothead warrior and the other a shy archer, without much of a defined relationship with most of the starting town’s inhabitants. They were both still given many a chance to be sarcastic, which does not fit either of them as much as it fits Sage. Their stories mostly consisted of choosing whether or not to be humble and were not nearly as interesting as my first choice of a protagonist. I also noticed that they occasionally had the exact same dialogue options in the exact same scenarios, making them even less distinct.
Additionally, Sage’s key revelation makes them seem like the clear main character of the group. Not only do they seem to have the most story importance, but also the most fun and unique interactions in all campaigns, not to mention the most diverse and powerful moveset. This leads me to question just how far can the idea of the three protagonists be taken without committing to it more drastically.
Every aspect of Alterium Shift seems to suffer due to this decision. Each character has slight differences in their path and posses a unique overworld ability, so several areas are only accessible or have something important in them during certain characters’ playthroughs, leading to a lot of roadblocks and an empty-feeling world. Each playthrough only reinforces that feeling of nothing interesting being there for the player to discover, as they already know that there is no worthwhile treasure to be found for the most part.
Though I tried to run from more and more battles with each character, I would always end up in the state of not receiving damage. Leveling, which fully restores the characters’ health and magic, is just too quick, and the game’s balance is completely ruined by it alone. Overall, the two cores of the gameplay loop, which are exploration and combat, fail to engage for one playthrough, let alone three.
I found it progressively more and more difficult to latch onto anything during my subsequent playthroughs. My fondest memories of Alterium Shift are those of the first few segments with Sage, with everything afterward not up to par. The new bosses found in each character’s campaign always looked interesting, but just like everything else they lacked any sort of oomph behind them, as they fell to the trusted tactic of spamming the confirm button on the strongest attack.
This is not a case of a completely irredeemable game, as some aspects show promise. Though some of its writing is rather cliché, I found it to be quite funny on occasion, leading me to want more interactions. The pixel and 3D designs are great, and the atmosphere, when the music hits right, is fantastic. Should that be built upon with a more engaging combat and deeper sense of exploration, I could see it turning out to be much greater than it is now.
As of right now, Alterium Shift seems far away from the level of quality required to reach the modern classics, and is an overall severely underwhelming experience. I can only hope that the period of Early Access will help with a complete reevaluation of the game, because right now it is a rather tough sell.
Mateusz played Alterium Shift on PC in Early Access with a review code.
